


Artifice

by Bluecookie300



Category: DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics), Young Justice (Cartoon), Young Justice - All Media Types
Genre: Bruce Wayne Has Issues, Damian is a sweet heart, Dick Grayson Deserves Better, Dick Grayson Needs a Hug, Dick Grayson-centric, F/M, Female Dick Grayson, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Interdimensional Traveller exposes the truth, Jason Todd Has a Heart, Male Catalina Flores - Freeform, No beta we die like mne, Parent Dick Grayson, dont expect any cannon, just go with it, this is a mash up of like five au'ish ideas
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:22:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21557719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluecookie300/pseuds/Bluecookie300
Summary: Jason was in a dive bar, on the dirtier side of Gotham. It’s the last place he expects to find his would-be older sister completely plastered and way more honest than he's ready to handle. Apparently, there were more skeletons in the collective closet of the Bat-family than anyone knew.Fem!Dick is called Rachel
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson & Jason Todd, Dick Grayson/Barbara Gordon (past), Dick Grayson/Bruce Wayne (past), Dick Grayson/Catalina Flores (past), Dick Grayson/Roy Harper, Dick Grayson/Slade Wilson (past)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 177





	Artifice

It was a dingy little bar on the bad side of town. To be fair, this was Gotham and almost all sides of town were bad, but this hole in the wall was located down near the docks, shoved in-between two warehouses.

To the inexperienced, the area gave off an aura of abandonment, seemingly empty of most life; dark, dreary and drab. It had none of the gothic charms that made much of Gotham more emo than it had any right to be.

But for those who knew better, disgusting life was dripping from every crevice. Down every ally were warm needles and stuffed in each abandoned warehouse where the big and small footprints of all kinds of rats, animal and human alike.

But anyway, back to the bar. It served downright swill in place of drinks, but that swill was also unbelievably cheap. On most weekends it was beyond overcrowded, acting more like a club than a bar. Even on this Tuesday night, Jason found it to be comfortably full, though he appreciated the lack of the hassle that was drunken throngs.

What he didn't appreciate was how exposed he felt. Crowds were good for hiding in plain sight, blending in with the masses. As nice as a modicum of personal space was, Jason wasn’t looking to get recognised.

His dumbass informant that has chosen this time and place for an exchange was getting dropped the second they were done tonight. If they were stupid enough to think that this was a smart place to meet than he was too stupid to be on the Red Hoods payroll.

He made his way over to the bar; the night was already looking like a bust so he might as well get a drink while he was here.

It was just as he was leaning back on the counter, drink at his lips, that his eyes caught on Rachel.

In one of the dark corners down the other side of the bar, his would-be sister was letting some douchebag looking guy press her into the wall, knee between her legs. Her arms were thrown over the guys' shoulders and there was an almost empty glass in her hand, sloshing as he pressed her further into the exposed brick.

Jason had never really been close to Rachel. She’d been kicked out of the mansion less than two weeks before he’d arrived, and then gone missing for the year and a half after that. She hadn’t turned back up in Gotham until just over six months before his … death … leaving little time for them to truly bond. While she had tried in the short time that they’d had, Rach had also still been avoiding Bruce, and even if she hadn’t been, she’d been busy with the team as well.

Where most now sort of regarded them as siblings as the first and second Robin respectively, that kind of bond had never had time to developed.

After the Lazarus Pit, Jason had taken his time in returning to Gotham, and by the time he had so much had happened in the world. Rachel had sort of repaired her relationship with Bruce, at least enough for appearances and to work together professionally, not to mention the new Robin that had been running around. Clearly, she had made more time to get to know this one, if not for Tim’s own sake, than at least out of guilt.

The pits madness had still had a hold of him upon his return, even after so long, and seventeen (?) year-olds were not known for their rational decision making in the first place. Some of the things he’d done, even now he couldn’t remember anything more than that he’d felt justified.

Looking back it was easier to understand how everyone had responded, how things had escalated so far. But that didn’t change how hard it was to rebuild relationships in the aftermath. Yes, he’d been wrong on some levels, but so had they.

Which all came back to here, even if they’d never been as close as the sibling's everyone expected them to be, Jason knew Rachel well enough to recognise when she was actually drunk vs when she was just faking it.

Which begged the question of what in the hell was she doing here? She’d always been such a goodie two shoes, or at least he’d thought so he mused, watching as the overly muscled blond guy leaned in closer to her blatant flirting.

Jason was more shocked by how plastered she looked than anything else. There were a million reasons why she might be here, doing what she was doing, and all of them related to her work. She could even be here for the same reason as him.

But she wasn't.

This wasn't a mission, or recon or undercover work. It couldn't be.

Because she was truly completely smashed, barely coherent, and about to go home with a guy that clearly had bad intentions. And none of it was faked.

For any other twenty-one-year-old this could have just sounded like a night of bad decisions.

But when you did what their family did, those kinds of bad decisions just weren't on the table.

It was also completely out of character for her to be so off guard too, not only with a stranger but in about as unsafe a setting as it could get.

Not to mention this was Rachel! The perfect golden girl who never did any wrong and was a serial monogamist. It didn't matter what any of the rumours said. Jason, as her sort of brother, knew better just how strange this was for her. Sure, Rachel was a generally flirty outgoing person by nature; but much of that was simply for show, and it was rare to see her flirt since that wasn’t her natural reaction to a crush anyway. Rach had always been more reserved than she’d let anyone realise.

Jason ruminated on all this for more than a few minutes as he casually scanned the whole bar, glancing back at Rachel and the Douche every so often. His informant was now over an hour late, and it looked like he wouldn’t be turning up.

He wanted to leave, but the level of bizarre in seeing Rachel so completely unconcerned about her safety was throwing him off. Was it safe to leave her here like this? Did he even have any kind of right to interfere?

A chord in him snapped when the overly buff dude's hand started to make its way up her skirt. It wasn’t that the guy was trying to hook up with his sort of kind of sister that did it though. It was the way Rach flinched away from him, if only momentarily, that set Jason suddenly straight-backed and marching across the room.

He pulled the dumbass off of her more violently than was strictly necessary, growling “Scram” and watching as the arrogant ass slunk away.

Turning back to Rach, he was just barely in time to catch her as she swayed forward. He awkwardly manoeuvred her so that her arm was around him as he all but dragged her out of the teeny bar.

"What the hell Rach? What even is this?"

He wasn’t expecting a response but for all his outward irritation, her lack of a greeting had made him more worried than he already was. She hadn’t even really acknowledged him yet.

She finally looked up at him after she stumbled down a couple of steps and out into the open air. Her eyes were made bigger and bluer by the smudged mascara bellow them as she finally seeming to register who had suddenly invaded her space.

"Heeyyy Jasson!" she slurred.

He glanced down at her to watch as her happy recognition faded into a pouty frown.

"Why'd'ya have to go and interrrupt, we were about to have such a good time," the whine came with wide eyes. She tipped forward, tripping over her own feet even as he held her up and began guiding her further away from the bar.

“I’m not going to dignify that with a response.” If she couldn’t even stand up by herself she was in no position to be consenting to anything.

"Jassson, d'ya think we could go find him, I was looking forward to that! Why'd'ya have to go and ruin it?"

Damn, golden girl was completely smashed right now. Seriously, how had she let herself get this drunk? And what the fuck was she doing in that fuckin bar anyway?

As they got further down the street Jason ran into a problem, he had arrived here on his bike, but Rachel was in no condition to ride home on it behind him. Slowly he lowered her onto the curb as he looked around lost.  
What the fuck was he gonna do? They were in the middle of nowhere and he had no way of getting them to anywhere else! Fuck!

He looked back down at Rach, lost in thought and only just registered that she had struggled to her feet again as she began to wander off towards the darkness of an alley across the street.

Jason rushed to catch her, as she stumbled. Damn. Even drunk off her ass she could still move fast.

He caught her under her arm, winding his own around her waist to hold her up.

"Where do you think you're going missy?" he asked almost amused.

"Home, you dumb-dumb?" came her witty response, pointing to the now obvious Zeta tube hidden behind the dumpster.


End file.
